Guest essay by Eric Worrall

He talks – yet nobody acts. Has John Kerry finally noticed that nobody cares what he says about climate change?

‘Mutual suicide’: US issues stark warning on climate change

‘Our heads in the sand at our own peril,’ US envoy for climate warns, as leaders discuss security implications of global warming.

24 Feb 2021

The United States has warned inaction by world powers on climate change is tantamount to a “mutual suicide pact” after countries such as China, India, and Russia expressed scepticism on the global security threat it posed.

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“But even though climate change has been repeatedly called ‘an existential threat’, we honestly have yet as a world to respond with the urgency required,” said Kerry.

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‘Serious doubts’

Russia, India and China said climate change should be tackled in other global forums, not at the UN’s main grouping on imminent world threats.

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“We agree that climate change issues can exacerbate conflict. But are they really the root cause of these conflicts? There are serious doubts about this,” said Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia.

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Read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/24/mutual-suicide-us-issues-stark-warning-on-climate-change

The breathtaking dysfunctionality of what is happening would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

China and India have real issues to discuss, but all Kerry wants to talk about is climate change.

In 2020, nuclear armed China and India only just averted an all out war, after clashes in the disputed Ladakh Highlands near the Indian border with Chinese Tibet led to military fatalities and lots of heated rhetoric.

Russia is trying to lead an effort to broker a lasting peace accord between China and India.

But the US envoy is not pulling his weight. I suspect that every time the other participants try to talk about possible resolutions for the Chinese / Indian border dispute, Kerry makes outlandish claims about how if they all made greater efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, everyone would be able to live in harmony.

Of course, other countries might show more interest in John Kerry’s climate grandstanding, if Biden passes his two trillion dollar taxpayer cash giveaway.

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February 24, 2021 at 12:33PM

China emerged as one of the top importers of U.S. coal in the fourth quarter of 2020 as the country banned Australian coal from entering its territories amid diplomatic tensions.

U.S. coal exports in the three-month period totaled 17.4 million tonnes, down 7.3% year over year but 25.1% higher quarter over quarter, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

China had the highest gain in coal imports from the U.S. among the top destinations in the fourth quarter of 2020. The Asian country imported 1.0 Mt of coal from the U.S. during the period, a 251.8% increase year over year and a 748.2% jump quarter over quarter.

With the unofficial ban on Australian coal in place, Chinese buyers turned to other major producers to maintain operations.

“As Chinese domestic coking coal reserves are depleted, they are experiencing a reduction in quality so need to supplement this coking coal with imported coal to maintain the correct coal quality for steelmaking,” Market Intelligence mining analyst Oliver Woolard said. “Although shipments from Australia dropped, Chinese buyers are shifting the balance to other producers of high quality coking coal with the U.S., Canada and Russia benefitting.”

Other countries in the region offer coking coal of good quality, but only the U.S. has comparable coking coal quality to Australia, Woolard said.

“It is simpler for Chinese buyers to import U.S. coking coal than adapt their processes to accommodate different coking coal quality, hence increasing imports,” Woolard said.

Full story

The post China’s US coal imports jump 748% amid Australian trade dispute appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum.

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February 24, 2021 at 11:27AM

When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently urged workers upset by the Biden administration’s decision to scuttle the Keystone XL pipeline to “learn to make solar panels”, he was oblivious to the fact that China and India dominate the solar panel manufacturing market.

President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Recovery Plan is to build a modern, resilient climate infrastructure that will create millions of good-paying union jobs, but Biden, like Kerry, may not be aware of America being unable to financially compete with the world’s solar panel manufacturing markets without huge government subsidies.

China and India not only control the supply chain of materials for solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries, but also have the least stringent environmental controls for the mining of the renewable materials like lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, copper, and many others, and minimal labor laws for their low-cost labor supply.

To meet their growing manufacturing sectors, China and India are deadly serious about their economic development, which means there is no place at all for electricity that cannot be delivered in volume, on demand, 24×365, whatever the weather. Hence, China has built more coal-fired power capacity in the last decade than any other country on earth as there appears to be no end in sight for China’s mammoth coal-fired power rush.

Work outsourced to foreign counties also results in a higher carbon footprint over and above doing that work in a more environmentally stringently controlled location like America.

Kerry has learned very little from the first two countries to go Green – Germany and Australia. Neither countries’ manufacturing sector can compete with China and India. With the Biden administration seeking an increase to the minimum wage to $15 an hour, America is surely not going to be competitive with China or India to manufacture solar panels in America.

Unless wages and conditions deteriorate significantly in advanced countries, the subsidized induced demand may go up for renewables in America, but those millions of new ‘green’ jobs for Americans is not going to happen as Kerry hopes. Those manufacturing jobs will go to China and India, and Americans will get the crumbs to just install those foreign made products, and then look for work at other locations.

Death and taxes are certainties, but the relationship between government subsidies to wind and solar and ‘green’ jobs becomes obvious, as soon as those subsidies get slashed.

As experienced in Germany, Australia, and Denmark, wind and solar investments disappear just as soon the government subsidies are cut. The European collapse in wind turbine manufacturers and solar panels was sudden and staggering, but not surprising. The ‘green’ economy in those countries turned gangrenous:

Wind and solar jobs are government subsidy funded intermittent work to produce intermittent electricity. As we have learned from the intermittent electricity shortcomings Nor’easters are disastrous to a Green America.

Intermittent electricity from wind and solar is fundamentally less jobs-intensive than supplying energy from traditional power sources. For continuous, uninterruptible, and reliable electricity it takes hundreds, sometimes thousands, of skilled workers to operate coal, gas, and nuclear plants that provide. By contrast, solar panels and wind turbines are largely set-and-forget once they are up and running.

The stimulus package is great temporary band-aid fix for businesses and employment during these pandemic times, but economies cannot survive with continuous government funds. Constant taxpayer subsidies in perpetuity that are supporting the intermittent electricity generation from wind and solar renewables, are not producing meaningful employment; it is welfare by another name.

With the recent roll backs or elimination of government subsidies in Germany, Australia, and Denmark in mind, it would take a brave soul or a person oblivious to facts, to tout a ‘green’ jobs bonanza in America for subsidized, intermittent, and wholly unreliable electricity from wind turbines and solar panels that have become a proven social and economic disaster in other countries.

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By Ronald Stein |February 24th, 2021

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February 24, 2021 at 11:04AM

Tucker: Left’s ‘disinformation’ campaign is destroying America

The world would be a better place if everyone saw segments like this. Not to convert them to a cause, but just to open their eyes to the gaslighting in the media.

We’re in an Information War and the first salvo is just to let people know there is a War and their news service is being weaponized against them.

Lighting the Rascism Fire helps bury “other stuff” in the smoke

How to stop discussion about corruption at the highest levels — yell “racist”

[Zack] Goldberg looked at every time the term “racism” was used in America’s largest newspapers and noticed a trend. There was a noticeable spike just after 2011, which not coincidentally was right around the time of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

When people are starting to talk about what Wall Street actually does in public, all at once journalists agree that the real problem with America is racism. America is not a place with a screwed-up economic system that rewards a tiny number of emotionally damaged grifters who possess otherwise useless skills applicable only to finance while everyone else gets poorer. That’s not a problem. No, America is instead a place where the rest of us must hate each other at all times because of our skin colors, which, by the way, cannot be changed.

That way, once we’re all yelling and aggrieved and angry about irresolvable race questions, once we’ve picked the wound until it won’t stop bleeding, we won’t have the time to ask even the most basic questions about economics — questions like “Why are all these billionaire hedge fund guys paying half the tax rate I am? Who precisely is getting rich from the Federal Reserve? Where’s all that money going?”

You don’t see a ton of stories about those questions in The New York Times. They’re too busy talking about race. It’s a pretty sophisticated operation. Vladimir Putin could never pull it off. He’d buy a few dopey ads on Facebook and call it a day.

No, it takes a sophisticated operator to take the central problem of American life, the agonizing death of our middle class, and cover it up with a smokescreen of manufactured race hatred. You’d really need to be, as CNN would put it, a “disinformation network” to pull that off.

It’s interesting that Carlson is going after the Fed Reserve. The mainstream media almost never does. Fiat currencies and unaccountable central bankers is where the corruption starts and is the river that feeds it. Fake money feeds a fake economy and eventually fake news.

As I said a decade ago: The money – you earn it, they print it. Welcome to the world of Corruption.

Tucker Carlson calls them on the “diversity” card

To paraphrase. Tuckers advice to the Woke Professional Class who make diversity a mantra: If you are serious about dismantling systems of power — why not start at the top. At the centres of power? The ideas of this revolution come from colleges. But what hasn’t changed at all are the rich kids that go to Ivy League institutions. The medium family income at Yale is $190,000.  So beginning immediately the top 50 colleges in the US should be reserved exclusively for the children of people who never went to college.  

The whole episode: Watch from 22:20

This revolution is the “Diversity Equity Inclusion” Unlike other revolutions this one is not for the Workers. This is a revolution designed to empower the already powerful.

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February 24, 2021 at 10:49AM

Looking at NASA’s Vegetation Index data, the news is good: the globe has greened 10% so far this century.

That’s good news because we know this ultimately means greater crop production area and forest expansion. Ironically, what many “experts claim to be a huge problem (CO2) is in fact one of the major reasons behind the greening.

Zoe Phin has a post on this topic at her site which really warrants attention.

Global Vegetation Index surges 10% in 20 years

Zoe downloaded all of NASA’s available 16-day-increment vegetation data from 2000 to 2021. Here’s her result:

NASA’s Vegetation Index has risen from 0.0936 to 0.1029, which is a 9.94% increase. Chart by Zoe Phin

“10% global greening in 20 years! We are incredibly fortunate!” Zoe comments on the results. “I just wish everyone felt that way. But you know not everyone does. To the extent that humans enhance global greening is precisely what social parasites want to tax and regulate. No good deed goes unpunished.”

Been greening 30 years!

This is not unexpected news to cool-headed climate realists. In August, 2019, we reported on a German study showing how the globe had been greening for 3 decades. Based on satellite imagery, German Wissenschaft reported, “Vegetation on earth has been expanding for decades, satellite data show.”

Sahara shrinking, becoming greener

Also not long ago a study by Venter et al (2018) found the Sahara desert had shrunk by 8% over the previous three decades. This is profound because the Sahara covers a vast area of some 9.2 million square kilometers. Eight percent means more than 700,000 square kilometers more area that’s become green – an area almost as big as Germany and France combined.

So in terms of vegetation, the planet probably hasn’t had it this nice in about 1000 years.

70% driven by CO2

And there’s more good news if you think CO2 is a problem as a greenhouse gas (it isn’t).

Last August, NTZ weekly contributor Kenneth Richard cited a study by Haverd et al, 2020), and wrote that “about 70% of the Earth’s post-1980s vegetative greening trend has been driven by CO2 fertilization” and that this greening will offset 17 years (equivalent) of the Earth’s anthropogenic CO2 emissions by 2100.

There are many more studies underpinning the good news of the greening planet – thanks in large part to mankind. It’s not as bad as the crybaby activists and media depict it to be. Not even close.Donate – choose an amount

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February 24, 2021 at 10:03AM